Page 6 - In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers (sample)

In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers

The Mirrored Tragedies of Paul Robeson and Othello

“In these ‘Broken Sonnets,’ Indigo Moor holds a reflecting glass
between Othello the Moor and Paul Robeson, the actor, scholar, and
equal rights activist who portrayed Othello in the America of racial
oppression and Communist witch hunts. This immensely ambitious
collection contains a history of race and the legacy of the slavery in
Shakespeare’s time that culminated in the driving of the Moors out of
Catholic Spain. On the other side of the mirror are the 1900s of Paul
R
Robeson: lynch mobs, blackface minstrel shows, Jim Croobeson: lynch mobs, blackface minstrel shows, Jim Crow, and the
persecution of Negros. This book is a populous mirror, reflecting a cast
of characters from Iago to Joe McCarthy, Desdemona to Langston
Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois and others. In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers
reverses our understandings of these two complicated, proud men and
makes them shine in the glaze of our refractions. This is one hell of a
book. You can’t look away from it. It’s looking back at you.”
—TONY BARNSTONE, author of Pulp Sonnets

”The interlacing narratives of In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers
suggests that our world is nothing so much as a mirror, revealing who
we are and have always been. These carefully-wrought and
brightly-imagined poems are both timely and timeless. Indigo Moor has
written a necessary book.”
—CAMILLE T. DUNGY, author of Trophic Cascade

“In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers is a duet between men and ideas.
Paul Robeson was once viewed as the tallest tree in the forest. Here,
Moor gathers his leaves and turns them into words. Somewhere
Shakespeare is tapping his fingers. The work glitters from
remembering. This book is filled with surprise which, at times,
becomes magical.”
—
—E. ETHELBEE. ETHELBERT MILLER, author of The Fifth Inning